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X-File A Day – “Tooms”

“Tooms” is the twenty-first episode of The X-Files, and marks the return of Eugene Victor Tooms (Doug Hutchinson), last seen in episode 3, “Squeeze.”

Somehow Tooms comes up for trial, and is released. This is, of course, a bad decision because as soon as he’s freed he gets back to his old habits (extracting, and eating, the livers of unwilling donors, all without a scalpel or anesthesia).

The psychiatrist who managed his care, Dr. Aaron Monte (Paul Ben-Victor) and led the effort to free him would have regretted his decision, if it weren’t for his unwanted contribution to Tooms very specific dietary habits.

Fox Mulder (David Ducovhny) is usually played as pretty intense and clever though his inability to compromise (or blatantly lie) during the review makes him come off as a bit nutty because there are occasions when the truth is more dangerous than any lie.

Mulder trails Tooms, to ensure that he doesn’t kill again, while Scully (Gillian Anderson) enlists the aid of Detective Briggs (Henry Beckman) who investigated Tooms in 1963, before he vanished, to re-emerge later.

Things get kind of silly when Tooms breaks into Mulder’s apartment, where he was sleeping, and frames him for beating him up. I don’t know about Tooms, but if my nemesis were nearby sleeping, killing him would probably be a more logical course of action.

And speaking of killing, when Mulder is fleeing Tooms, who was making a nest in a crawlspace under an escalator that was in the approximate location of where he used to live on Exeter Street, why did he turn on the escalator, killing Tooms?

Both he and Scully were armed, and since Tooms’ mutant abilities didn’t include being bullet-proof, I don’t see why they couldn’t just subdue him. After all, they had the contents of his stomach (as well as the death of Dr. Monte, among others) as evidence of his crimes.

As well as an icky igloo made of paper and bile (which I imagine must have stank more than a little bit, which makes hiding it under an escalator used by the public a dumb move on Tooms’ part).